İstanbul to surpass Paris in number of tourists
İstanbul currently stands behind Paris and London in terms of Europe's most visited cities. It is ranked seventh in the world. İstanbul has seen around a yearly 15 percent increase in tourists in recent years, and that will continue until the city snatches Paris' spot as the second most visited in Europe, said Güney. The MasterCard 2014 Global Destination Cities Index, released last month, indicated that it expects 11.6 million people to visit the city of seven hills in 2014, after 9.87 million visitors came to the city last year. Credit card purchases in İstanbul increased 50 percent compared to last year, said Güney, citing figures from the Interbank Card Center (BKM). She also remarked that the total amount of money spent on flights to the city had increased significantly year-on-year, Today's Zaman reports. In terms of visitor spending, İstanbul came in fourth on the list, with visitors being expected to spend $9.38 billion this year. Between 2009 and 2014, İstanbul was considered the fastest growing tourist city in terms of the number of tourists arriving by airplane. In 2008, just over 7 million tourists visited the city and the number increased to 7.5 million in 2009. Turkey's tourism industry recently enjoyed a highly fruitful period, as the Eid al-Fitr holiday coincided with one of the heaviest periods of international visitors to Turkey. During Eid, which follows the holy month of Ramadan, locals bought bus tickets to visit family and also booked vacations in areas throughout the country. Hoteliers said rooms were full nationwide during Eid, while transit representatives said thousands of extra buses had to be deployed. However, the southern Mediterranean city of Antalya -- one of the most popular destinations in Turkey, in particularly among European tourists -- witnessed slow growth this year compared to 2013. While the visitor count increased 5.6 percent this year, that was lower than the 10 percent growth seen the year before. A total of 4.27 million tourists visited Antalya during the first six months of this year.
